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Sorry to Bother You is racial satire, zany comedy and a lot more

In Sorry to Bother You, Cassius “Cash” Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is struggling to earn a buck, to avoid being evicted from the garage apartment he shares with his girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a sloganeering artist and street performer. (ANNAPURNA PICTURES)

Is Sorry to Bother You a caustic racial satire, calculated to offend the entitled?

Or is it a zany comedy about the downtrodden 99 per cent vs. the upwardly scheming 1 per cent?

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Yes and yes … and stay tuned. Rapper turned filmmaker Boots Riley’s feature debut is both of these things, until it takes a turn toward something altogether stranger. That’s at least three reasons why you should see this Sundance sensation, which is unlike any other 2018 movie.

Get Out’s Lakeith Stanfield stars in this gonzo amusement, written and directed by Riley, that surfs genres and mocks its own interior mantra: “Stick to the Script,” or STTS for short.

“Stick to the Script” is the workplace slogan of RegalView, an Oakland, Calif., telemarketing firm where our hero Cassius “Cash” Green (Stanfield) is struggling to earn a buck, to avoid being evicted from the garage apartment he shares with his pink-haired girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a sloganeering artist and street performer.

Cash finds he’s too nice a guy to effectively do the dirty work of selling stuff to people they don’t really want. Then a wise older co-worker (Danny Glover) advises him to “use your white voice” to make his pitches, a little edge of entitlement to get ahead in an unfair world.

Bingo! Cash starts ringing up the sales, much to the astonishment and dismay of his fellow clock-punchers, who are planning a strike/revolution led by a guy named Squeeze (Steven Yeun).

Cash is promoted to “Power Caller” and bumped upstairs via a golden elevator to a higher level of hucksterism, where a mysterious gent with an eye patch called Mr. Blank (Omari Hardwick) welcomes him to a 1-percenter’s paradise.

The upstairs clientele include a lifestyle company called Worry Free, whose creepy CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) has a plan too diabolical (and spoilerish) for words. Good rule of thumb, in life as in the movies: when something is described as being worry free, you need to worry.

Writer/director Riley, lead vocalist for hip-hop group The Coup, comes from a background of repertory theatre and political activism. He brings all of that, and also some of his funky music, to Sorry to Bother You, along with flat-out weirdness, like fake TV shows where people hurl Coke cans at strangers or assault them on camera for the delight of the masses.

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The story occasionally meanders and the jokes don’t always land, but there’s an energy and creativity to the film that reminds me of early Spike Lee movies.

This is a film where the production design alone speaks of the immense imagination and drive behind the storytelling. If you see just one comedy/drama/freakout this year, Sorry to Bother You is it.

Peter Howell is the Star's movie critic based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm

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